She Was My Baby Sister
by Bineshii
Summary: Trip and Lizzy Tucker had a close relationship growing up in Florida.


Disclaimer: No filthy lucre changed hands

**She Was My Baby Sister**

By Bineshii

Trip was eight years old when Lizzy was born. He hung around his mother when she was feeding or changing the baby. He watched her sleep, sitting silently beside her crib. When she was able to sit up in her playpen, there was Trip sitting beside it passing toys through the bars and Lizzy passing them back to him.

"Is that normal behavior for a boy who before this you could not keep in the house if there was a kick ball game in the neighborhood?" Asked Trip's dad.

"Well dear, I wouldn't discourage him. He still goes off to games with his brother quite often. But I could use the help around here. Who says a boy can't be nurturing?"

"As long as it does not get out of hand," Charles Jr. frowned at his wife.

"Speaking of male nurturing, it's time you took a turn at diaper changing. I have my hands buried in dishwater at the moment." Mrs. Tucker scrubbed a stubborn burned on pasta lump off the bottom of a pot, the remains of her older son's last cooking effort. She rinsed it before turning to give her husband another look. The place in the doorway where he had been standing was now vacant. She sighed and went to change Lizzy's diaper.

….

The porcelain bank was one of Trip's prize possessions. It was a statue of a baseball player with a bat over his shoulder waiting for the pitch. It held Trip's savings in pennies and a few coins of higher denomination that was going to get him a real grownup baseball bat in a couple of months. One day, he heard a crash in his room and ran there to discover two-year-old Lizzy standing over the shards of his bank. He was instantly very angry. But then he saw her stricken little face with her mouth frozen in an O shape.

"Me put, me put," Lizzy said, holding up a penny between her thumb and forefinger. Then a tear started running down her cheek. She knew she had done a bad thing.

Trip was overcome with an urge to comfort her that was at war with the anger making him want to spank her little butt. He knelt down and hugged her. "It is ok, Lizzy."

Her little body was shaking. "I will never let anything hurt you, ever. I will always protect you. You can count on me."

….

Trip hoisted the fishing rod over his shoulder and picked up the pail of worms in his other hand. Larry was meeting him at the creek in ten minutes and bringing some cookies, a couple of cans of soda, and some bottles of his dad's beer that he had snuck into a cooler. Trip and Larry wanted to take a taste to see what it was about beer that went so well with watching football games. So it was an annoyance when three-year-old Lizzy came running after him.

"Tip, Tip, I want come with. I want go fish."

"Go fish is a card game Lizzy. Stay home and ask Mommy to play cards with you. Or play cards with old hound. At this point, you and the dog are about equal at that game." Trip then turned his back on Lizzy and began walking very fast down the main road toward the turn off which lead to the woods and the creek.

Lizzy stood there all pouty for a couple of seconds, and then began to run after him. "Tip, don't walk so fast, I….not….keep….up….wif….you!" panted Lizzy. Then she sank to the ground and began to cry.

Trip kept walking and turned into the dirt road. He stopped and listened. Silence. He peeked back around the fence at the corner to see Lizzy, sitting on the side of the road with her thin little shoulders hunched over and crying into her hands. His heart just melted. "Oh come on then! Don't just sit there where you could be hit by a car! Hurry up. You can make yourself useful and carry this pail of worms."

Lizzy leaped up and ran to him, her tear streaked face all smiles. She took the pail's metal handle in both hands and waddled after him. It was heavy for her and she kept breathing hard with each step, but she was happy.

They arrived at the creek a bit late because Trip made Lizzy carry that pail the whole way. He was hoping she would ask him to take her home because she was tired and did not want to 'go fish' anymore. No such luck with the plucky little girl. So Trip called Mom on the cell phone to say he had Lizzy with him and would bring her home after she got tired of fishing. Lizzy was provided with one of the old poles Larry brought and a pile of cookies and a soda. She happily kept dunking the pole to make the bobber go plunk.

"You will scare the fish away," warned Trip.

"I gif fishies a ride, if de hang on da string," said Lizzy.

"Okay. You do that, Lizzy," Trip told her as he took a sip of the beer hidden between himself and Larry so Lizzy could not see it.

They sat in the sun by the creek side until all three got sleepy. The boys were bored because the fish were not biting today. They finished one bottle of beer between them and lay back in the sun, their poles stuck into the soft creek bank and leaning against their legs. If a fish were to bite, they would feel the pull. Trip had Lizzy lie right next to him so like the fishing pole, he could detect her movement. He didn't want her to get up and fall into the creek. He and Larry opened a second bottle of beer, but had only drunk a quarter of it when they drifted off to sleep.

Trip woke up with a start. How long had he been sleeping? Where was Lizzy? He was in a near panic looking at the glare of the sun on the flat surface of the creek. All he could think was that she was laying under the water somewhere. He elbowed Larry awake and started to walk along the bank. No still little form was visible under the water. Then he heard a hiccupping and saw the bushes behind him move. Leaping over to them and parting some branches, he discovered his little sister sitting and hugging a beer bottle against her chest. She hiccupped again and looked at him with unfocused eyes.

"Hi Tip! I was turs…, turs…, tursty." The bottle was empty.

"Oh no," groaned Trip. "What am I gonna to do with you now? Lizzy, Mom will never let me take you anywhere with me again!"

"Why not?" Slurred Lizzy. Then she hiccupped loudly and flopped over on her belly to throw up on the grass.

"What am I gonna do with you?" Trip picked Lizzy up. Draped across both his arms she was like a dead weight. He hefted her so her face rested against him.

"Don't feel so good, Tip." She threw up on his shirt.

"I know, sweetheart, I know." Trip asked Larry to pick up all the poles and the cooler and the worms and follow him home. He knew he was about to catch it good, but right now he was concerned about Lizzy. Maybe she would have to go to the doctor. He could feel her breathing as her chest expanded and contracted against his shirt. Her stringy blond hair was matted and sticking to her cheek. It smelled of beer.

Their parents weren't home. Good. Trip stripped the shirt and shorts off Lizzy and gave her a bath. He had her sitting in the warm water and as he washed her hair, he noticed she had stopped hiccupping. Her eyes were focused normally again and she had stopped throwing up. Maybe he would not have to tell his parents after all. He washed the beer smell off every part of her skinny little body and dried her. Then he sent Larry home with the advice not to mention the beer or Lizzy's drinking to anyone. He dressed Lizzy and did a load of wash to get rid of the beer and vomit smell.

When his parents returned with six bags of groceries they told him they had taken advantage of his taking care of Lizzy that afternoon and done some serious grocery shopping. Trip felt more relief that guilt and said he would entertain Lizzy until dinnertime. He wanted to make sure she would be all right. His parents were sure their son was finally learning responsibility.

At dinner that night, Trip was served his favorite dish: catfish and French fries. There was pecan pie for desert. Trip was a happy kid that night, until his father twisted off the cap on his after dinner beer. Lizzy perked up and said "Beert. Daddy hic up an hic up an puke wike me an Tip hafa gif daddy a baff too." Needless to say, the day did not end happily for Trip after all.

….

The garage was a refuge from the afternoon sun although it was still hot in there. Rivulets of sweat kept running into fourteen-year-old Trip's eyes as he tinkered with the lawnmower. "Do you need this wrench now?" Asked six-year-old Lizzy as she surveyed the tools she had lined up in front of the cardboard box on which she was sitting.

"Right, Cupcake. You have been watching me fix this so many times I think you could do it yourself." Trip reached for the wrench and gave Lizzy a big smile. Her tag-a-long habit was becoming more useful than annoying. She had watched him fix leaky faucets, tighten drainpipes under the sink, repair door hinges, and even tune up the car. Trip thought Lizzy would someday become an engineer. He was vacillating between becoming an architect and an engineer himself. Often he would sit on his bed with Lizzy beside him and show her books of famous buildings. Sometimes he would let her sit at his computer to make building designs or play with the specs of an engine.

"Let's go to the movies after we fix this motor." Lizzy suggested.

"After we mow the lawn," Trip answered, "you're on. Go ask Mom to be sure it's ok. Did you practice for your fiddle lesson? Mom will say yes if you have practiced enough this week."

"I have. I practiced with Mom, so she knows I have," Lizzy reassured him.

….

Lizzy was eight years old when she learned to swim. Her brothers taught her by making her paddle from one to the other. They first made her float while their hands held her up. She trusted them, so she relaxed and learned to float flat on her front and her back. As her kicking got better, they moved further and further apart until one day she swam beyond the brother that was holding out his arms to catch her. She turned and smiled saying, "come and catch me!" After that you could not keep Lizzy out of the ocean. So Trip had to teach her how to scuba dive too, when she turned ten.

Shortly after that, eighteen-year-old Trip left for Starfleet Academy. Lizzy often would go to his empty room and sit when she wanted to be alone. Then the pre-teen years began to change her interests. She found she was actually not that bad in math and that she liked to draw. She redesigned her old dollhouse, first with a scale drawing, then with some balsawood and an exacta knife. Her father thought that showed talent, but on spring vacation Trip admonished her for still being interested in dolls. She was hurt but did not tell him so. She did not tell him much anymore, and when he tried to tell her about the exciting prospects of space travel, she asked what was wrong with just improving things here on earth? Lizzy had joined an environmental club at school and decided cleaning trash off a beach was a better use of her time than going to a football game with her brothers. Trip was hurt but didn't tell her. He just shrugged his shoulders and said, "Suit yourself." It seemed they were growing apart.

One holiday when Trip caught his friend Jerry kissing Liz behind the garage, he gave him a broken nose. He never spoke to Jerry again, even though they had been friends since Trip had tutored him in math a few years back. The youth was four years his junior, but, well, heck, Lizzy was only fourteen years old to Jerry's seventeen years. Liz was angry. She had been trying to evade Trip since she had started showing an interest in clothes, make up, and boys. Trip now lived at a Starfleet base and had missed a lot of these developments with Liz. It was a shock that she was as interested in boys as he was interested in girls. Dispensing broken noses proved not the best way to catch up on Liz's life.

….

Trip came to Liz's high school graduation. She had been on the honor roll all four years and had gotten a service award for her environmental activities. She spent the summer of her junior year at an architectural program for youth at Taliesin in Wisconsin. Frank Lloyd Wright had become her idol and she had obtained a scholarship to the International Academy of Design & Technology in Chicago to study architecture. Trip knew all this, but he was more focused on her personality and beauty, which he saw as something to be protected. Liz hugged him but they were a bit formal with each other now. Trip had chipped in with his parents to buy an expensive CAD program for Liz's PC, now that he was a lieutenant in Starfleet and earning a good paycheck.

They talked that evening of her high school graduation. In fact, they talked half the night away in the kitchen over a six-pack of Miller's, laughing about Liz's first beer. But she held back on the subject of boyfriends and he curbed his tendency to wax poetic about space exploration. They reminisced about childhood antics and old friends now grown. "Whatever happened to Larry Dawson and Vera Holmes and Peggy Thompson?" They regained some of their closeness that evening. Liz was still his baby sister and Trip was still her favorite big brother.

….

Trip became immersed in research and development in Starfleet over the next few years while Liz finished college and joined an architectural firm as a very junior member. Career building in its early stages can be quite difficult. There was a sorting out in both their fields of the barely competent, the modestly talented, and the future leaders. Trip struggled not only with engineering problems but discovered that the politics of Starfleet and the Vulcan High Command would make or break even the best work enginerers. Liz discovered there was still an element of gender prejudice in her profession and that junior architects did not get to design the offices of multi-national corporations. She now had a boyfriend. Jack's family was wealthy and powerful and his looks were what every girl dreamed of. She was ecstatically happy and even Trip approved of this one, after Jack seduced Trip with tickets to the Rose Bowl.

Trip and Liz rarely got to spend time together, though a couple of times Liz went to visit Trip and got to follow him around while he explained his latest Starfleet project. She looked cute in a hard hat, he thought. Maybe someday they could work together with him designing the heating and plumbing for one of her little buildings. But maybe she would get married and be taken care of. Jack had the right attitude: wrap Liz in luxury and hid her away from the world. Trip's childhood pledge to protect Liz had never diminished in intensity. His sister represented what his home world was all about, what he would go off into space to protect and preserve.

….

One day Liz's small but well designed projects got noticed by an innovative architectural firm. Out of the blue, she got a letter from them and then an interview. When she told Jack she was leaving his uncle's architectural conglomerate, he was furious. "If you are going to be part of my family you will stay loyal to our firm."

"But I am getting nowhere here. I am barely treated better than an office clerk. I need to think of my career and maybe it is better if we do not work together," She argued.

"It is better if you do not work at all," he shot back.

"That is insensitive Jack. I feel that you are suffocating me sometimes." Liz walked back to her drawing table and Jack turned away thinking he had to keep an even tighter rein on this country girl who had risen from the backwoods of Florida to attract the notice of a scion of an important family like his.

Liz did leave Jack's family firn. But she moved into an apartment with Jack. They seemed to settle into a calm domestic life now that they saw each other only in the evenings. Liz was content – for awhile. Then she began growing uneasy and suspicious. Jack said he had to work late many nights, to build up money and reputation so they could have a good life when they were married. But many times when she called him at work to see what time he would be back at their apartment so she could have dinner ready, she only got the answering machine. He became evasive.

Then one night when she could not reach him, she went out to a film. Sitting five rows in front of her was Jack with another woman. She left the movie in the middle and walked for an hour. When she confronted Jack, he said it was nothing, just an after work relaxation with a colleague. Too bad she had not stayed with his uncle's firm or they could have seen the film together.

When Liz spotted Jack's car at a motel one evening, she knocked on the door of the room it was parked in front of. Jack answered the door in bare feet and a motel bathrobe. A woman sat up in the bed behind him. Liz was calm with repressed fury. "It's over Jack. Should I pack up my things or yours?"

"Liz, I love you. But men are not monogamous by nature. Grow up. Get used to it. I will be home in an hour. And remember to call my mother to say we will be over for dinner tomorrow night. Be a good girl and run along now. This is nothing. It is you that I love." And he closed the door in her face.

Liz felt so humiliated. His sort of people felt perfectly at home shutting doors in people's faces, thinking people like her would accept anything they did just to rub shoulders with the great movers and shakers. It had been fun, at first, when he had dazzled her with gifts and dinners at the best places. But it was destroying her. By the time Jack got home five hours later, Liz had moved out. She found a studio apartment much closer to her firm and had only lived there a week when she got a call from Trip. "Hey Sis, Jack wants you back. Don't blow the best deal of your life."

Liz seethed. "Well hello Trip, and how are you too? So glad the first time I hear your voice in over two months, you want to know all about my new job and to see my latest project designs."

"Aw come on Liz, you know how much I care about you. And Jack loves you too."

"Jack likes to make love with me. At least he used to, but I found out that he has had another girlfriend. And he does not appreciate my career."

"Geez, Liz, I am sorry you feel so hurt. Let me fly there and we can talk." Trip knew he could catch a Starfleet shuttle to almost anywhere on earth at any time. His baby sister needed him. And he thought he could help patch up the relationship.

"I would love to see you," Lizzy's voice appealed to him over the phone, "but don't try to push me back to Jack. It's over," Liz insisted, valiantly trying to calm her voice, holding back her fury and humiliation when she really wanted to just cry on Trip's shoulder. To be fair to Trip, Liz had not told him all the humiliating things Jack had done. She knew that if she did, there might be more broken noses. Liz did not want Trip to do anything which might jeopardize his Starfleet career.

After Trip's shuttle landed, he went straight to Liz's apartment. Liz and Trip pulled another of their talks long into the night over a six-pack. Trip had hardened in his attitudes because of the political struggles in Starfleet and was not too open to changing what he thought was settled in his sister's life. Jack meant protection, stability. He thought Liz was suffering from a hurt that could be repaired and Jack had sounded so remorseful over the phone. Trip only glanced at the designs Liz had spent months on. "Nice designs, but let's get back to this problem with Jack. Never has anyone in our family had such an in with the powers that be. The opportunities for you and your children will be limitless. You won't have to struggle like I do with pompous diplomats and admirals. Your children won't have to claw their way up to prove their talent and then still have their pet projects canceled."

Liz became morose and silent. Trip though that meant he was convincing her, but like her previous teenage self, she was shutting him out – this time for his own protection so he wouldn't get angry and do something stupid. He patted her hand, pecked her on the cheek, and said he had to catch a shuttle back to the base because he had an important meeting in the morning. He would catch a couple hours sleep on the shuttle. Neither knew this was the last time they would ever touch physically.

The next week, the designs that Trip had so carelessly tossed aside, were chosen for the corporate headquarters of a multi-national which was negotiating contracts with Vulcan and Denobulan businesses concerns. In fact, Liz would be designing a multi-world corporate headquarters. Liz forgot all about Jack and flew between her firm and the corporation's current headquarters for meetings with the board. She was too busy to think about anything else. She decided this project was so important that she asked her parents if she could work on her project in creative isolation at their mountain cabin in North Carolina. It was the most intense and creative time she had spent in her young life so far.

Back at her firm, her boss told her that the corporation had approved her initial designs and she was to be taken out to dinner that night on part of the retainer that had been sent to the firm. Her colleagues, who all had important commissions, were happy rather than jealous of her success. She had found the working relationship that she had been longing for. Since construction would not start for another six months, Liz was given time off to go to south Florida to work on the blueprints in isolation and do some repair work on the house she had grown up in. Her parents had bought a smaller retirement home in Tallehassee and wanted to get their old house ready for sale.

Liz wanted Trip to meet her there for a last reminiscing all night talk in the scene of their childhood before the house was sold. But he was busy preparing Enterprise for an important mission. So she wrote him a long letter and stuffed it in a large envelop with the latest photo of her taken sitting on a couch with her arm draped over its back. She slipped in the copies of the latest blueprints for the corporate headquarters, thinking he might look more closely at them during periods of inactivity on board.

Trip called his mom from Enterprise on the eve of leaving for deep space again. She told him of Liz's good fortune and he was floored. "But she is so young to have gotten such an important commission! Mom, are you sure? Ok, send me those preliminary drawings she sent you. I know I have never seen them."

Liz's package arrived an hour before Enterprise was due to leave space dock. Trip tossed it on his bunk to look at later, as he had to do a final check on the engines. Liz had grown up, he thought. Something about that was sad. He would have to get to know her all over again. He wanted to tell her he forgave her for leaving Jack. She was a big girl now and had to make her own decisions, even if she would always be his baby sister. He had been away so much that now he longed to spend more time with his family. After his adventures for two years on Enterprise, he appreciated home and his family like he never had before. After this mission, he would have to take a long vacation. He would help Lizzy paint their childhood home in south Florida. They would go scuba diving and take in a football game or two. He would ask her to help in selecting more films for movie night on Enterprise. Then gently, he would take the time to coax all her little secrets out of her, like only he could do when they were kids. And he would tell her the deepest secrets of his own heart. There would be time, after this mission, for after all, Lizzy would be safe here at home on earth while he was off in space.

10


End file.
